Japan and Britain: Two Tales Of Over-Extension

I just finished reading two books I purchased at the World War II museum in New Orleans: Clive Ponting’s 1940: Myth and Reality, and Jeffrey Record’s A War It Was Always Going To Lose, the former about Britain’s entry into, and persistence in, war with Germany, the latter about Japan’s decision to attack the United States in 1941. Neither book is new, and I don’t intend to use this space to “review” either – they were both worth reading, and neither is some kind of definitive “must read” text.

What struck me, after reading them back-to-back, was the similarity between the two island nations’ situations on the eve of war, notwithstanding their radically different cultures and histories, not to mention the different points in development of their respective empires.

Britain, on the eve of World War II, had an enormous problem of over-extension. It confronted a rising Germany on the Continent that already far outclassed it in terms of industrial prowess. In Asia, it confronted a rising Japan. It had global military commitments that far exceeded its ability to meet. And it had no money. Once Italy sided with the Axis and the Soviet Union signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, it faced the prospect of a multi-front war with only France for an ally. Once France fell, it faced such a war in fact, with no real allies at all.

The obvious thing to do would have been to appease Germany, but of course even if it could have been appeased (if, in other words, Hitler didn’t actively seek war), Germany could read the tea leaves as well as Britain could (better, actually, since they had a better measure of their own industrial capacity than Britain did). Given Britain’s relative weakness, and given that the power differential was progressively shifting in Germany’s favor, it’s hard to imagine anything Britain could have offered Germany that would have sufficed that wouldn’t also have been cripplingly humiliating to Britain, effectively making the British Empire dependent on German goodwill for its very survival. Attempting to avoid war without preemptive surrender, instead Britain got a war it could not possibly win on its own, and from which it was only able to emerge victorious by putting itself completely at the mercy of the United States.

Japan, meanwhile, notwithstanding that its empire was still under construction, faced a similar situation vis-á-vis the United States to the one Britain faced vis-á-vis Germany. Its empire-building ambition brought it into conflict with the United States, an enemy it could not possibly hope to defeat. And America’s strength was only growing; time was not on Japan’s side. The logical thing to do would have been to appease the United States. But again, America could read the tea leaves as well as Japan (better, because we had a better appreciation of just how vast our industrial capacity was relative to theirs). Appeasement would have meant accepting permanent dependence on the United States, and a humiliating renunciation of Japan’s imperial ambitions. If this course was ruled out, then war was inevitable, and it was better for Japan to fight on its own terms, and hope for a miracle – perhaps the Americans were cowards; perhaps Germany would defeat Britain and the Soviet Union, and give the Americans pause about fighting – than to suffer slow strangulation.

None of this is news. But it felt instructive, to me, to focus on the objective situation of these two powers, and ignore factors – culture, history, regime ideology, the personalities of the major leaders, even geopolitical strategy – that are so often the focus when we think about war and peace. After the fall of France, a humiliating peace with Germany may well still have been possible for Britain. War, by contrast, meant the very real possibility of outright defeat by and subjugation to Germany – and if it didn’t mean defeat, it meant permanent dependence on America and a loss of the Empire. Britain opted to continue the war. How different is that behavior from the behavior of the Japanese leadership – whom we rightly anathematize as monsters, but wrongly consider to have been mad to even have considered war with America.

I think about this often in respect to what America’s situation is going to be in twenty-five or fifty years. I think Daniel McCarthy is right that America’s rise as a neutral power was substantially made possible by Britain’s insouciance. We were free-riders, in effect, on British liberal imperialism, and then we took over the job when Britain went bankrupt. Nostalgia for America’s position in the late-19th century, or the 1920s, is therefore pointless (as nostalgia usually is). But the position we find ourselves in currently is a precarious one, because every rising power implies our relative decline, and precisely the powers we will most need to accommodate (because of the objective fact of their power) are the ones that it will be hardest for us to accommodate (because they will have a clearer understanding of that fact than we will).

The central geopolitical question of the next few decades, it seems to me, is whether a liberal order – based on free trade and mutual nonaggression – can be sustained on a genuinely multi-lateral basis. I hope so. The alternatives don’t look very palatable.

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30 Responses to Japan and Britain: Two Tales Of Over-Extension

This assumes that the only alternatives for Japan were war with the US, or “permanent dependence on the United States, and a humiliating renunciation of Japan’s imperial ambitions”.

The US had already shown that it was not going to war with Japan over China, despite atrocities such as the Rape of Nanking. The Japanese could have had a large empire covering China and south-east Asia without getting into a conflict with America. Hence it was utter folly for them to start a war they could not possibly win.

“Nostalgia for America’s position in the late-19th century, or the 1920s, is therefore pointless (as nostalgia usually is).”

Nostalgia, longing for the past, usually is pointless, because, as you imply, the conjunction of events that made the past what it was have come and gone. The part of the past that we “want” was contingent on the rest of reality, and of course, that larger set of events, conditions, etc, can’t be made to become what it was before.

I wonder though, in this case, if folks actually long for the late 19th century or the Twenties. It seems to me that both of those periods were ones in which America was already no longer truly “isolated” from the bad old Great Power geo politics of Europe. It seems to me that most folks who long for the past, in the context of the USA and its foreign relations, long for a much earlier period, pre Civil War at least, when the oceans were functionally so wide as to provide almost complete immunity for the USA from anything that happened outside the New World, and the USA was already dominating that New World.

Alternatively, one would think that 1945 was the cherished moment. A fully engaged USA dominated the world then, as it would never do again. It had the gold, the money, the oil, the enormous army, navy and air forces, the atom bomb, the political and diplomatic upper hand, the factories, the farms, the population, etc, etc. None of them touched by the war that had decimated, or worse, all of its potential rivals. As well as the intangibles…a proud, almost cocky culture, a nation that had never really been defeated in war in war and had known only unconditional victory in living memory, that had defeated the British, then had “saved” them, and the French, and the rest of Western Europe (twice!), from the Germans. And, along the way, had put down a host of lesser foes…Spaniards, Mexicans, Native Americans, Barbary pirates, and so on. Hard power, soft power, cultural dominance, whatever, the USA had it all in 1945.

Why would folks long, necessarily, for eras when the USA was engaged, but was not “Number One?” Better to not be engaged at all, or be number one, one would think.

Of course, neither of those objects of nostalgia are obtainable either.

“But the position we find ourselves in currently is a precarious one, because every rising power implies our relative decline, and precisely the powers we will most need to accommodate (because of the objective fact of their power) are the ones that it will be hardest for us to accommodate (because they will have a clearer understanding of that fact than we will).”

Yeah, I don’t think that the problem comes from a relative lack of understanding. Rising powers pose threats to status quo powers. Both the rising powers and the status quo powers understand this, and also understand what can be accommodated and what can’t be.

The British, in their heyday, were the ultimate status quo power. As they themselves recognized, they had all or most of the places worth owning, having gotten there first or violently expelled those who preceded them. Over time, though, this meant that they had to defend places spanning the entire globe. Places that were de jure as well as de facto “British.” Which made accommodation almost impossible.

In Europe, perhaps, the British, along with everyone else but the potential hegemon of the moment (the French in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic era, the Germans in the next era, the Russians during the Cold War), had a shared interest in preventing that hegemony from occurring. Thus, there were always European (and eventually American) allies for the British in all of the above named conflicts. The British could never fully “accommodate” a predominantly Continental European rival, because they could never countenance a single power ruling the NW coast of Europe. But, fortunately for Britain, having allies meant that they never actually had to accommodate these rivals.

Elsewhere, particularly in Asia, the situation was different. Here, again, Britain had possessions, not merely interests. To maintain its status, Britain had to do a lot more than merely prevent a rival from achieving hegemony, it had to defend its possessions and protectorates…Aden, the Gulf states, the entire Indian subcontinent, Sri Lanka, Burma, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Australia, and all the various Pacific Islands it held…from all comers. It could not accommodate any rising power by giving these up, nor were their many potential allies willing to help them keep them.

And that is why 1940 was such a disaster for the British in the East. It could never hope to prevent a rising Asian power from simply snatching and grabbling its de jure possessions, as the Japanese did. The USA destroyed the Japanese after they had done so, and de colonization took care of the rest, but, even without de colonization, it was already clear that Britain, which was the strongest of the western European powers, could no longer hold on to it eastern colonies. (And it was even clearer in the cases of the much weaker French and Dutch.)

The USA, on the other hand, has no actual rising powers rivals that it can’t accommodate. China is the most prominent “riser.” The USA has treaties with South Korea and Japan, it is true. But both of those countries are wealthy, technologically sophisticated nations, with solid governmental structures. They can easily defend themselves against the rising power of China. Elsewhere, the USA is simply not committed to protecting anything that the Chinese might want. We have finessed Taiwan, as the British could not really do with Hong Kong. Australia and New Zealand and the Philippines are also under US treaty protection, but I doubt seriously that China wants to colonize these places.

The nature of Great Power rivalry has changed some, and mere possession of territory and the establishment of formal empire is not the end now. Now, economic power, backed up by military might, to be sure, is the key. I doubt China, outside of Taiwan, and some miscellaneous islands, has much territorial ambition at all.

And that pretty much is it. Russia is only very, very dubiously seen as a rising power. It has only a fraction of the strength, however measured, that the USSR has. It is fighting to maintain an enclave and a measure of influence in Ukraine, for God’s sakes. That is how far it has fallen. It poses zero threat to the US-created liberal order, much less any US treaty obligation State, never mind the USA itself.

So, who’s left? India? It struggles to maintain hegemony in its own subcontinent, and has a militarized, nuclear enemy, Pakistan, on its doorstep. Brazil? South Africa? It will be a long time, if ever, before these States pose even theoretical threats to the liberal world order.

The EU is fully integrated into that order. Indeed, so is China, and Russia would like to be. This notion, therfore:

“The central geopolitical question of the next few decades, it seems to me, is whether a liberal order – based on free trade and mutual nonaggression – can be sustained on a genuinely multi-lateral basis. I hope so. The alternatives don’t look very palatable.”

is, I think, rather alarmist. China and Russia have been asking, rather politely, under the circumstances, that the USA and its lackey the UK play by the rules of the liberal order (that they created and recreated, respectively), and have been doing so for close to two decades now. I don’t see China and Russia going to war in Iraq and the Balkans without a UNSC Resolution. I don’t see China and Russia twisting a UNSC Resolution all of shape as the Western powers did in Libya. It seems to me that they have been playing by the rules, and want to preserve those rules and the order that they help ensure. The unpalatable alternatives are the US attempts at global hegemony, which aren’t even necessary from a purely instrumentalist, US-based view, and piddling, Third World non players, like Saddam, Gaddafi and now ISIS, which are blown up all out of proportion to their actual threat, so as to justify more Western aggression.

The USA, if it stopped shooting itself in the foot, could be part of a truly multilateral liberal global order for the foreseeable future, far beyond the next few decades. It should stop playing Globo Cop, stop with the Lone Ranger BS, and let that order proceed along its proper and legal lines.

Given Britain’s relative weakness, and given that the power differential was progressively shifting in Germany’s favor, it’s hard to imagine anything Britain could have offered Germany that would have sufficed that wouldn’t also have been cripplingly humiliating to Britain, effectively making the British Empire dependent on German goodwill for its very survival.

Corelli Barnett described that recipe for Great Britain, which she didn’t use.

Actually, I am getting increasingly sceptical about Overextension theories. At best, they present a very incomplete picture.

The succes of a State is in the long run contingent upon its ability to draw resources from it’s economy, and this ability is comparative.

The British State did a miserable job – its taxation was simply too light. The Empire was not succeeded by Germany, but rather by Rooseveldian America, which did a pretty good job of exacting taxation.

. But the position we find ourselves in currently is a precarious one, because every rising power implies our relative decline,
I think this is overly pessimistic.

It is merely precarious IF the United States refuses to treat the Taxation as the sinews of the State, and refuses to treat maximisation of Taxation as a primary motivation of all Government policy.

You don’t compete with your would-be supplanters by taxing less, you compete by taxing more!
Of course, it’s perfectly true this can be overdone, but United States is on the other extreme of the curve.

“How different is that behavior from the behavior
of the Japanese leadership – whom we rightly anathematize as monsters,
but wrongly consider to have been mad to even have considered war with
America.”
The “monsters” we seek abroad to destroy, are our own.

Before talking about “Britain’s relative weakness” again, you might want to look at Britain’s War Machine by David Edgerton (pub 2011). He makes a pretty convincing case that the Britain of 1940 was quite strong, and actually was weakened by losing a chunk of Asian colonies that were sources of important raw materials (compounded by the losses of the Dutch). By a number of measures Britain was much more industrialized than Germany. He has a bias, but plenty to back it up.

” every rising power implies our relative decline, and precisely the powers we will most need to accommodate ”

The US is not declining. It is Europe and Japan that is in decline especially as a percentage of world population.

China presents challenges to the US. India will probably rise the most after China. I don’t see why the US can’t have a good relationship with India as long as we treat them with respect and don’t expect them to blindly follow our decisions.

War, by contrast, meant the very real possibility of outright defeat by and subjugation to Germany – and if it didn’t mean defeat, it meant permanent dependence on America and a loss of the Empire. Britain opted to continue the war. How different is that behavior from the behavior of the Japanese leadership – whom we rightly anathematize as monsters, but wrongly consider to have been mad to even have considered war with America.

I’d say making war on the United States (Japan’s decision) was a significantly different behavior than continuing an ongoing war with Germany, with industrial and naval support from the United States (Britain’s decision).

I’m not downplaying the difficulty of Britain’s position in 1940. But, presuming the British believed a cross-Channel invasion would not succeed, I’m not sure what they would’ve gotten by surrendering instead of continuing to fight. Generally speaking you don’t get better terms from an enemy by knuckling under at the first opportunity. If the British believed that:

a) the United States was likely to remain an ally in all but name (providing naval and industrial support to Britain, and not to Germany), and might intervene to prevent the starvation and/or outright invasion of Britain by Germany

b) Germany lacked the sea and air power necessary to invade, demolish or strangle the British Isles, and would not be able to develop that capacity for years, if ever

c) Germany and Russia were not likely to remain in a stable alliance indefinitely

then continuing the war for a while and hoping for an improved bargaining position seems perfectly reasonable. Obviously it’s easy to state those assumptions with confidence with 20/20 hindsight, but as a factual matter they were all true at the time. So the only thing required to understand the British decision to keep fighting is an assumption that British leaders had a reasonable grasp of their actual position.

I don’t know if it was “mad” for Japan to make war on the United States–I don’t really know enough about what their actual and perceived political and military position was. But it’s certainly not comparable to the British decision (which was entirely rational as long as you assume the British were correctly interpreting reality). The primary assumptions made by Japan seem pretty much backwards–they assumed that the United States would intervene militarily to thwart Japanese imperial ambitions in mainland Asia and the Dutch East Indies, and hoped that attacking the US first would make US interference LESS of a danger. Maybe there were sound reasons to believe these things, but launching a war against a much larger and more heavily industrialized enemy was certainly more of a gamble than Britain’s decision to stay in the war a while longer in 1940.

Backing up DCA’s comment, Adam Tooze’s “Wages of Destruction” makes a strong case that Germany was NOT more developed industrially in any all around sense than Germany, and that German leaders saw themselves as weak vis a vis Britain’s world wide empire. And actual German conquest of Britain was no more likely than Napoleon’s.

And even if it was, I’m sorry, I think Britain’s choice in 1940 was not a difficult one. Appease Germany and become junior partners of the Nazis–or resist and become junior partners of the USA. Really, that was a no-brainer, from all points of view: economic, political, morals, and self-respect. Tolerate “boogie-woogie” and jazz–or collaborate in the Holocaust. Even jazz-hater Tory conservatives like Tolkien never had any real hesitation on which choice was more toxic for everything Britain had stood for.

Chris Atwood: Love Tolkien’s books, but who the Hell cares what he thought about Britain allying with the US to fight Germany?

The Brits, French, and Americans subjugated, humiliated, and nearly literally starved the German people after WW1 — hardly a war about freedom or principles by any stretch of the imagination. And we’re supposed to go along with your apparent assumption that the Brits were great and the USA was a moral paragon compared to those cruel Germans.

Our absurd devotion to Britain and bigotry against Germany and Germans was contemptible 100 years ago and it hasn’t become any more sensible over time.

One big difference between Britain and the US: the home territory of the latter is continental and capable of much in the way of self-supply, and also rich in human resources. In other words, the US is more like China than Japan or Britain. Now, China has had episodes of decline (some of the centuries long) but it’s never been close to irrelevant. Unless the US fractures, even in decline the US is not likely ever to risk irrelevancy.

And we’re supposed to go along with your apparent assumption that the Brits were great and the USA was a moral paragon compared to those cruel Germans.

Is the assumption that, in 1940, Britain and the United States were clearly morally superior to Nazi Germany one that needs to be defended in detail? Believing that the moral depravity and hyper-aggression of the Nazi regime made an Anglo-American alliance preferable to German hegemony in Europe is not mutually exclusive with believing that Germany was treated unjustly after World War I (for example, Winston Churchill believed both things).

Our absurd devotion to Britain and bigotry against Germany and Germans was contemptible 100 years ago and it hasn’t become any more sensible over time.

I’m not sure what the relevance of this is (even if it were true) to a discussion of whether Britain made a rational decision to continue the war in 1940. To the extent the United States is intractably “devoted” to Britain and “bigoted” against Germany, that presumably only strengthens Chris Atwood’s argument that Britain correctly chose to rely on US support and continue fighting Germany.

The USA, on the other hand, has no actual rising powers rivals that it can’t accommodate. China is the most prominent “riser”….and mere possession of territory and the establishment of formal empire is not the end now. Now, economic power, backed up by military might, to be sure, is the key. I doubt China, outside of Taiwan, and some miscellaneous islands, has much territorial ambition at all.

Moreover, despite its enormous conscription base and its aptitude for acquiring protected technologies, China has established little in the way of visible permanent apparatus with the capability to project hard power. Having laboured to maintain control of its civilian population over an extended period of explosive growth, the Party is understandably reluctant to arm a rival authority.

The USA, on the other hand, has no actual rising powers rivals that it can’t accommodate. China is the most prominent “riser”….and mere possession of territory and the establishment of formal empire is not the end now. Now, economic power, backed up by military might, to be sure, is the key. I doubt China, outside of Taiwan, and some miscellaneous islands, has much territorial ambition at all.

Moreover, despite its enormous conscription base and its aptitude for acquiring protected technologies, China has established little in the way of visible permanent apparatus with the capability to project hard power. Having laboured to maintain control of its civilian population over an extended period of explosive growth, the Party is understandably reluctant to arm a rival authority.

Instead, the challenge posed by China is based entirely on its hic et nunc current accounts balance with the United States. Much is made of our dependence upon China as a benign debt-holder, but China is in reality more reliant upon the one-way gusher of hard currency that could, under extraordinary circumstances, be turned off.

The British lost their Empire immediately after they lost the second part of their Anti-German war to their allies — just as they lost the first part to their allies.

Before the first installment, they were the worlds creditors. Afterwards, not anymore. After the second installment, India broke free. Without India to bleed dry …
As far as morals are concerned, Yalta is not talked about nearly as often as it should be.

Yalta has been discussed ad nauseam. Given that the Soviets already controlled most of the territory in question, and Roosevelt wanted the Soviet Union to enter the war against Japan, what happened in the aftermath was unsurprising. Greece and Austria were preserved, which may well have not occurred w/o Yalta.

Certainly not the Allies’ finest hour, but it is not as if the Brits and the US were going to “roll back” the Soviet Union. Now that would have been an overextension.

“None of this is news.” The preceding paragraphs describe the realities of WWII, and how it would have almost certainly turned out without the America-Soviet alliance.

While it may not be news to any serious, non-partisan historian, it would be news to most of the allied country’s populations. Each allied country’s history as taught in public schools infers that WWII was won single-handedly by each country, and that no other ally was really needed.

Based on my personal experience with British acquaintances, I’m convince that most British citizen believe they could have defeated Germany by themselves.

And we all know that is the case with our country, and we have plenty of indications that is the case with the Soviet Union. It seems the only country that has an accurate history is Germany, and the only country that has learned any real lessons from the war. Japan is still in denial.

“I doubt China, outside of Taiwan, and some miscellaneous islands, has much territorial ambition at all.”

You must regard Tibet as a fait accompli.

I don’t.

Next time you hear some blustering little neocon coward running his mouth about the “world order” and “Western values” in the context of Israel/Palestine, Ukraine, or Georgia, ask him when he’s planning to embargo and topple the Chinese regime for swallowing an area the size of western Europe and enslaving its defenseless ancient people.

I do consider Tibet a fait accompli. A nation can’t have territorial ambitions over territory it already controls. And the control is not merely de facto. My understanding is that most of the world recognizes de jure Chinese sovereignty over Tibet.

I do agree with your implication that the neo cons pick their enemies carefully, and don’t choose nations that can fight back, like China.

Richard Parker:

Not sure I see the point. My statements about 1945, including the size and power of the US military that year, were in terms of it being a possible candidate for nostalgia, if one is an American longing for a particular year in which the USA was riding high on the international stage. The demobilization of the US military (which was not quite as complete as you imply…and which was soon to be reversed during the Cold War) in 1946 hardly changes the status of the USA in 1945.

I think this analogy would only be completely accurate if Germany had been as hostile to Britain in the 1930s as America was to Japan, and as determined to destroy Britain after the outbreak of WW2 as America was to destroy Japan after Pearl Harbor. America devoted the necessary level of resources to destroying Japan; Germany never devoted the necessary level of resources to destroying Britain. You can’t ignore ideology – ideology made Germany determined to attack the USSR,despite the strategic madness, and willing to see the British Empire preserved intact.

Britain declared war on Germany because Britain would not tolerate a German-dominated Europe, not because Germany threatened Britain in any but the most speculative fashion.

Japan attacked America because Japan would not tolerate America’s economic strangulation of the Japanese empire – Japan had no objection to America having an empire, or to being dominant within her sphere.

philadelphialawyer:
“China and Russia have been asking, rather politely, under the circumstances, that the USA and its lackey the UK play by the rules of the liberal order (that they created and recreated, respectively), and have been doing so for close to two decades now…”

>>”“The central geopolitical question of the next few decades, it seems to me, is whether a liberal order – based on free trade and mutual nonaggression – can be sustained on a genuinely multi-lateral basis. I hope so. The alternatives don’t look very palatable.”

is, I think, rather alarmist.”<<

Yes, I agree. Chinese GDP may exceed US GDP in the next ten years, but that will not magically give China a US-level military, technological base, or global reach. She seems likely to be content to recognise US global hegemony at least for the next few decades. On current trajectories we would be looking to near the end of the 21st century before the world becomes genuinely multi-lateral again.

Nothing lasts forever, and in AD 2100 a mostly Latin United States with a much smaller economy than China seems unlikely to still be the unquestioned global hegemon. And there will be sudden shocks & surprises along the way as the geopolitical tectonic plates shift. But it seems very unlikely that the next thirty years or so at least will not still be 'The American Century'.

Radical Center:
“And we’re supposed to go along with your apparent assumption that the Brits were great and the USA was a moral paragon compared to those cruel Germans.”

I think the First World War and its aftermath was a huge mistake. Personally as a Brit in 1890 I would have advocated rebuilding the old alliance with Germany and let her dominate Europe if she wished. If Germany felt secure with British support she might not have attacked France, indeed Russia might not have mobilised against her and the whole WW1 might have been averted.

But in 1940 the USA was indeed a moral paragon compared to the Germans.

The best comments were Simon’s. From the documents available to date, Hitler wanted control of the continent plus Slav farm lands and was then satisfied to be the hegemon. He respected Anglo-Saxons as fellow Aryans. He did not think, though, that the Japanese had attained the status of Honorary Caucasians as did TR. Alec: FDR gave Japan ultimatum of giving up Chinese gains or face strangulation campaign which would see their factories shut and little food within a little over a year. Japan had to cave humiliatingly or go to war. They chose war. Interesting we are concerned about Tibet (and maybe justified) yet not “East Turkestan”/Xianjang (which China, using Tibet example has even less claim to as it was the latest acquisition and so least justifiable). Good post Simon. As far as results, let us not forget USSR/Russia contribution for far largest German losses.